Jackal's Dance (15 page)

As far as he was concerned, Henneke had only one flaw. She didn't seem to have a brain in her head. It hadn't mattered much until he retired. His job as a clerk with South African Railways kept
him occupied during the day and, outside work, six growing children provided ample diversity. But now, with the kids grown up and gone and him being home most of the time, Johan realised that his wife tended to talk for the sake of talking, had few, if any, original thoughts and usually responded with banal and often irrelevant comments. And it was driving him mad.

Henneke's face remained impassive, watching the road but not really seeing it. She had to be careful. Lately she'd caught herself contradicting Johan. It had been easy enough to fob off his bombastic domination with placating praise and meaningless tittle-tattle when he hadn't been underfoot all the time. But now, the continual interference and laborious lectures were getting on her nerves.

Right from the beginning of their life together, Henneke had coped with her marriage by taking refuge in fantasy. Movies and books provided the fuel, a fertile imagination did the rest. As she went about her daily cooking, cleaning and mothering chores, Henneke ceased to be the dowdy dumpling, the invisible, personality-less, feeling-less family anchor who no-one considered might have needs, ambitions, likes or dislikes of her own. Johan would have died if he'd ever found out the antics she got up to in her mind. Having perfected the art of being mother and wife in the flesh, she became mistress, temptress, glamorous, sensual and abandoned in her head. She lived in two separate worlds and infinitely preferred the one without Johan.

Her mother had said she would grow to love him. Well, she never did. Her father saw Johan as a well-mannered man of honourable intentions. He was, but with absolutely no ambition and even less idea of a woman's needs. Her brother had winked lewdly and implied that Johan would be quite a man in the bedroom department. But Henneke, still a virgin when she married, had read books and listened to her friends. Johan's idea of foreplay was to grab her hand and place it over his penis so she would know he was ready for her. His idea of good sex was to climax as quickly as he could, roll off her groaning and, within two minutes, be fast asleep.

Henneke discovered early in their marriage that fantasy and masturbation made good bedfellows. Not so bothered about sexual gratification these days, her imaginary life continued. She could be anything she wanted: famous actress, cancer-curing doctor, world-class tennis player. Anything at all.

Right now, Henneke was giving a press conference. The world was anxious to hear how the first female formula one Grand Prix racing driver juggled a successful marriage and dangerous career. Johan could drone on to his heart's content. He never listened to her responses anyway.

Felicity Honeywell thought, not for the first time, that a solo trip to Etosha had to be the silliest bloody idea she'd ever come up with. What on earth possessed her to do it? A game reserve was like a tropical island, a place to be with family, friends, a lover, or even, if all else failed, a louse of
a husband whose eyes touched up every bit of skirt from twenty to sixty. A woman on her own was khaki fodder. Shit! Why had she come?

There was still time to change her mind, catch the airbus back to Johannesburg and go home. Instead, she passed her First National BOB card to a girl on the Avis counter, signed a form where indicated and was handed the keys of a Toyota Rav 4 automatic. As it often did, Felicity's mind shifted into rhyming mode as she went in search of her hired car.

Dream of space and dusty roads
,

Of endless blue and brown
. . .

Felicity stopped and considered a moment.
What rhymes with roads? Toads? Loads? Loads and loads of toads?

Dream of dusty roads and space
,

Of endless brown and blue
,

The traveller pauses in this place
,

And tries to find the loo.

Grinning slightly, Felicity located the vehicle, heaved her suitcase into the back, slammed the door in a way she'd never do with her own car and unlocked the driver's side.
Honeywell, you're losing it!
she thought, getting a quick mental image of someone, probably her, standing in the middle of nowhere with their legs crossed. The mind-picture faded. Felicity stood looking into the car, feeling slightly apprehensive. What was she doing here? This white cocoon waiting to wrap its hollow emptiness around her, accentuating the fact that she was utterly alone. Felicity shook her head and
climbed behind the wheel. ‘Okay, beast. It's just you and me.'

Felicity Honeywell was South Africa's most published poet and, up until recently, that was just how she wanted to keep it. But when life sticks out its foot and causes a tumble, sometimes it's time to take stock of the damage. In Felicity's case, the collapse of her seventeen-year marriage meant looking closely at what she did for a living.

Reading every single poem she'd written, Felicity was startled to discover that they virtually mirrored her life. As a young bride she had been heavily into love sonnets. A few years later everything was an elegy, triggered no doubt by the numbing news that she was unable to conceive. Her next phase dabbled briefly with heroic epics, railing against the system and lauding Africa's struggle for identity and fairness. Injustice became the child she would never have. In her late thirties, when she faced the realities of a less than perfect marriage and political policies in a country that seemed hell-bent on self-destruction, her work took on a satirical note, although whether Felicity was mocking herself or the world was unclear. Probably both.

More recent poems held a bitter quality and were so markedly different from her earliest work that she wondered if they could possibly have been written by the same person. That was when she began to question the relevance of her chosen profession.

Felicity was in savage, cynical mode when she'd
said to her publisher, only last week, ‘Poetry is horseshit. An outpouring of drivel over which literary minds scramble to find meanings that the poet didn't even know were there.'

From writing her own poems Felicity began to read the works of others, searching for a clue as to whether they, like her, had grown weary as they stumbled along life's highway. The more she read, the more she enjoyed those who saw life through a froth of frivolity. Felicity currently favoured Ogden Nash.

The song of canaries never varies

But when they're moulting they're pretty revolting.

There wasn't much the critics could make of that. It was what it was.

Felicity realised suddenly that sitting behind the wheel of a stationary vehicle might also be considered pretty pointless. Etosha was a good five hours away. It was eight in the morning. Time to move. She adjusted the seat and mirrors, strapped in, started the engine, selected R for reverse and damned near ran over a man wheeling his suitcase across the car park. ‘Sorry,' Felicity mouthed through the still closed window.

He waved a tired hand and kept walking.

She noticed he was quite good-looking.

A roll in the hay

And a bloody good lay
,

But hey, not today.

‘Bad girl.' The airport, for some reason, was about fifty kilometres east of Windhoek. All she had to do was find her way into the capital and
pick up the main road north. There might be a bypass. No point in getting lost – why not ask somebody? She rolled down her window and called to the man she'd nearly knocked down. ‘Excuse me.'

He stopped and turned.

‘Which way is town?'

He pointed to a sign she hadn't noticed.

‘Thanks.' Up went the window, its sunscreening tint hiding her grimace of embarrassment. He must think her blind as well as stupid. Felicity backed more cautiously this time, slid the gear into D for drive, and followed the road into Windhoek. More by good luck than anything else, she noticed signs for the B1 motorway and Okahandja. Pulling into a bus stop and consulting the map supplied with her vehicle, Felicity discovered the place. ‘Oka . . . what?' At least it was the direction she wanted to go. Beyond that, if she stayed on the B1 she'd eventually reach Otjiwarongo. ‘How can people give places names like that?'

‘Hang a left at Otjiwarongo onto the C38. I can do that. Outjo to the Andersson gate, on through Okaukuejo rest camp and follow a dirt road around the pan to Logans Island. Piece of cake.' She nearly jumped out of her skin when an impatient bus driver behind leaned on his horn. With a feeble wave of apology, Felicity did an illegal U-turn and swung left to pick up the B1.

As she cleared the city suburbs, a feeling of freedom swept through her. This wasn't so bad after all. She was in control of her own destiny, not tied to a
husband who, if he didn't get his own way, inevitably resorted to sarcastic sulking. The more Felicity thought about it, the more appealing her near-single status became. She could please herself from now on – eat, sleep, go, say, whenever, wherever, whatever she liked. Her clenched fist thumped the steering wheel. ‘Way to go. Yessss! I like it.'

The sun was shining, her head as clear as the road, a spirit as free as the wide open land around her. Felicity wound down the driver's window and opened the sun roof. Hot dry air had little impact on closely cropped blonde hair. A pair of Serengeti sunglasses protected her powder blue eyes. She sang, Kristofferson mainly, switching to Simon and Garfunkel before belting out a couple of Tina Turner numbers until her voice gave up.

About two hours later, Felicity stopped at one of the numerous roadside resting places, deserted but for a shady tree, concrete table and rubbish bin. She stretched, went to the back and opened up her suitcase. Rummaging until she located a pair of shorts, Felicity dropped her slacks and changed, completely unconcerned about being on a main highway which, while it wasn't busy, certainly carried enough traffic to make such an exercise daring. A bus passed, going in the opposite direction. The occupants waved enthusiastically, knowing they'd just missed a peepshow.

Feeling more comfortable, and not giving a damn about her near miss, Felicity set off again. The vehicle's all-terrain tyres made a monotonous whine on the tarred road.

The song of tyres never expires

But when they're screaming it's pretty demeaning.

‘Oh, Mr Nash, I do apologise.'

Demeaning. Screaming. There'd been a bit of that around lately. The Turd – Felicity no longer thought of her nearly ex-husband by his given name. Martin Honeywell became The Turd simultaneously with an announcement that he was leaving her for his secretary. The Turd demeaned and she screamed. The Turd left and she stayed. The Turd moved in with his secretary and she wasn't going to get him back. Nor did she want him back. But, oh Christ, through the courts she had made him pay!

Here lies The Turd

Shaken, not stirred

Now that he's broke

He's bloody absurd!

The irreverence of Felicity's mind poems were an escape valve, a way to reduce life and all its little oddities to one common denominator – humour. It was the way she had come to cope with things, both pleasant and unpleasant. When Martin left with one small overnight bag, saying, ‘I'll come back for the rest tomorrow. It might be better if you weren't here,' and the front door closed behind him, she'd been powerless to stop herself.

You can come back with monotonous regularity
,

But by morning, your things will have gone to a charity.

They had too. In his cupboard, dangling from a coat hanger, all Martin found was a receipt from
the Red Cross detailing their grateful acceptance of his possessions. He was not amused when they refused to return a single item, forcing him to buy back what hadn't already been sold.

As well as her ditties, Felicity had one other little quirk. She read number plates. A car was approaching. It had a South African registration, CFM1086.
CFM. Cash from Martin.
That pleased her.

Questioning the relevance of her creative career, Felicity also had to face the reality of a new financial position. Who exactly read her poems? University students, literary pretenders and school children, that's who. Royalty cheques were regular but would hardly keep her afloat. While married to The Turd she could pursue her passion for poetry. But now was rethink time. She had a reputation, a known name, a publisher, but they weren't going to pay the bills. She'd discussed it with her agent, who was also a friend.

‘How about a novel?' he suggested.

‘Fiction? That's a novel idea.' She'd grinned at him.

‘Seriously. You are fluent in English and Afrikaans, with a great command of both languages. There's no reason why your words can't flow in narrative just as beautifully as they do in your poems. Think of it as a career extension.'

So that's what she was doing. The idea was daunting. In poetry she could flit from one subject to another. Her poems could be two-liners or carry on for pages. A novel was so different. Sticking to
the same theme for perhaps one hundred and forty thousand words. Could she do it?

Felicity put the idea on hold while she wrestled with the complexities that inevitably accompany the break-up of a lengthy relationship. It was an acrimonious settlement and she admitted to being the main cause of dissension. It was all very well for The Turd's lawyer to claim, ‘My client only wants to do what's best. Sell the house then split the money and all possessions down the middle.'

‘What am I expected to do with half a dog?' Felicity demanded when her attorney repeated Martin's oh-so-smug let's-be-reasonable suggestion.

The man didn't know her very well and found such lack of respect for the law disconcerting. ‘I'm sure he doesn't mean it literally.'